


His God (His Guy)

by archea2



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Chuck is God, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, Humor, M/M, Romance, Season/Series 11 Spoilers, Season/Series 12 Spoilers, Temporary Character Death, The Winchester Gospels, voicemail fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: Chuck sends Sam what he needs: a book of the Winchester Gospels that doesn't exactly play by the rules.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [burglebezzlement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/gifts).



> Dear Burglebezzlement,
> 
> I have tried to tailor this treat to your requests the best I could, even if the end result may not be exactly what you had in mind. So: no porn, a hopeful ending, and a dab of meta as I went with your "unedited Winchester Gospel" prompt. I've had to refer to a major character's temporary death, but it is, I repeat emphatically, temporary (in fact, one of his shortest canonical deaths!).
> 
> Three quick notes:
> 
> \- Sam's new book owes much to Borges' "Book of Sand".
> 
> \- Spoilers for the season 11 finale and season 12, episodes 1 to 9 (First Blood).
> 
> \- The "chapter and verse" quoted to Sam by his heart and memory is from 1 Kings 19: "And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice." (The Lord, predictably enough, is in the still small voice.)

Sam finds the package on the morning after the day before (his rescue day), while Dean is still and methodically snoring his pie down.

Sam is in the kitchen with his mom, the two of them still a bit cautious around... well, less each other than the normalcy of egg-frying and manning the resident Bakelite coffeemaker. But as the minutes laze by, and the smell of coffee knocks at his nostrils, Sam takes it in. Fried eggs: real. One true Mom: ditto. Not-dead Dean: check. Sam grins and turns to clap _normal_ one on the back, i.e. reach for the milk, when there’s a boom like the chief wind of Kansas thumping the walls, and Mom says, "Good thing this house is grounded". 

Which shows some Moms don’t know best, because, hard upon the wind, the ground is shaking beneath their feet. Sam says "Whoa". Next thing he knows, the fire under the frying-pan takes a _woosh_ leap to the roof, missing the ceiling by an inch, and Sam says,"Whoa, _wait_ –". Then the earth shakes an extra bit and Dean pops his head in at the kitchen’s door, tuft-haired and yawning " _All_ right, Mommy, I’m up". 

"No, no, wait, that’s…" Sam’s heart is leaping too, gearing in; dumb, credulous heart, quoting chapter and verse from memory. "We have to wait for the still small voice." 

Dean’s "Huh?" crosses the air with Sam’s cell phone and its still small ping. The screen reads "You have new mail", but when Sam taps it, his in-box turns up empty.

"Oh crap, it’s Pixie Day," Dean says groggily, watching Sam head for the main door. "Can’t stand the little creeps."

It’s not, actually. It’s a small parcel, with the sort of address you’d expect a child to write on the first page of their favorite book, while their life is still as round and bright as the apple on Teacher’s desk. 

 

_Sam Winchester_

_The Bunker_

_Lebanon, Kansas_

_The U.S.A._

_The Earth_

_The Milky Way Galaxy_

_Me_

 

" _Holy_ crap," comes the gruff coda in his back, and Sam – heart knocking itself out like a born Winchester – finds that, once more, he agrees with exactly half of what Dean says.

 

* * *

 

He nearly misses the name Carver Edlund at first, due to the postcard pinned to the dust jacket. Big splash of blue.  _Greetings from Playa Paraiso,_ in thick red letters _,_ and a whiskered kitten in Mexican boots and a sombrero. The cat meows when Dean pokes it with his finger, until Sam holds the card up and out of his reach.

_I think it’s not quite fair that Dean should get what he needs most and not you – who stood by him to the very end, good brother Sam. Hope this makes _you_  even. Coconuts rock! xxx, Chuck_

"A Jim Ed Brown quote, Sam? Seriously?"

"What does he mean, what you need most?" Mom’s voice is a bit down her throat, like she caught a cold that leaves it husky. "A _book_? Dean said you were a part-time scholar, but…"

"God," Dean says feelingly, then glares up in case this was misread for thanksgiving. Then, being Dean, lightens up again.

"Dude, signed copy? You wouldn’t believe what these e-Bay users –"

But Sam is still gazing at the cover. The blank, no, white cover: all white, nothing like the muscles-at-moonlight gig he remembers from the public edition. It sets off the bold title proclaiming the book as _The One and Only Complete Unedited Supernatural_.

"That’s nuts." Dean has taken to headshaking again. "Friggin‘ series totaled, what, forty books? Fifty? No way you could squeeze them into that midget."

Sam opens the book at the very end – only to find more leaves stocked under his thumb. Goes back for page 1, spreading his hand on the cover and opening the book with his thumb, once, twice, to no avail. Despite his best effort, the book keeps churning up unread material. A glance down at the page number tells Sam it’s 549. Sam blinks.                                                                                                                

"I think it’s a magic book," he tells the other two. 

‘Right, because we _so_ need another one.’

"This one’s harmless, Dean. It’s…" It’s a gift. God’s given word, handed gratis to the guy who gave the Apocalypse a headstart six years ago. How does that even make sense? Still, the last fanboy to try and wrangle some man-made logic into the Word of God was Father Teilhard de Chardin, and, well, that story didn’t end too well.

"Harmless? How can it be harmless? _It ganked breakfast!"_

"Boys!" Their mother’s voice lacks the rough burr of a John Winchester, but as it is, it does the trick. They turn to her as one man. "Dean, toast. Sam, let me have a look at that thing."

"Mom, uh, no. I – I don’t think you want to –" Sam hugs his gift to his chest, belatedly remembering the monster twist at the end of the book. Books. Most of them, really. He’s gonna have to exert some parent-wise control here. "I mean, it’s actually, you know, kind of mine, I don’t think God intended it for anyone else to –".

"The God whose last script kinda ended you," Dean mutters under his breath. Sam turns sharply, but Mom cuts in with, "Sam. Book. Now."

It falls opens in her hands, doubling its size as all books tend to do, once they find themselves a reader.

 _…the drop of blood fell in Baby Sam’s tiny mouth. Down, down it went, and the daemon’s veins darkened in hideous sympathy_. Mom stops, time stops. Dean stops munching. _But it never reached Sam’s soul. Bruised and crushed it might be, and at one time homeless, but ultimately Sam’s to have and hold. His own private Samulet, glowing like a halogen light bulb whenever Sam would kneel down and oh crud narrative continuity_  

Silence. 

"… Okay," Mom says at last. Voice shaking, eyes on her oh-so-grown son, and Sam finds her gaze and holds it, both aware of the new sensation in their chests. The guilt, hers, the shame, his, being salted and burnt by a purer sense of catharsis. They stare at each other, shrewd in their mutual love.

"I’m…" Mom stops, tries again."I’m still catching up with that God business. But this… whatever it is? I say it passes muster." 

"Huh." Dean clears his throat, picks up his toast, once more unto the no-chick breach. "Ketchup for me, please."

 

* * *

 

The book is a miracle.

The book is the worst.

The book is a three-card monte: if Sam opens it with a resolution to get this answer or that consolation – say, how Dad felt about their last skirmish, or if Jess found peace in the afterlife -, he gets jack. (Worse : he gets _Bugs_. Again. And again. More often than not, the scene where Dean slaps his butt and Sam _starts, his demure cheeks pinkening, all four of them_. For the love of…!)

He tries to cross-reference the pages only to find that most of their numbers are not even that. They’re glyphs and sigils from some outer-space-system, possibly Enochian, and half of them look like they might be cat doodles. Which is actually kind of charming, but no help. When Sam turns the book over, he is greeted with the portrait of the author as, well, an author. It takes up most of the dust jacket, giving Sam notice that God’s hair curls naturally and, yup, a bona fide Brown groupie if the ukelele is any indication.

Sam checks that cover out on a regular basis. Sometimes with a scowl ("Stop Bugging me!") that ends in a smile. His rare, upside-up smile.

Mom doesn’t mention the book again. Sam wonders if she sees it as a fair trade – he gave her Dad’s journal, after all. Told her Dad’s writing, Dad’s words, helped him fill some questions he didn’t know he had. Could it be… is she thinking that Chuck’s become some sort of replacement? Seriously?

"Well, if he is who He is," she says, "then that’s what it is. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like you and Dean struck too lucky on the care-and-feeding front."

" _No_ ," Sam says, unnerved, because Chuck? Is Chuck of the ukelele and russet highlights in his brown hair, and human, all-too-human stage fright, and Sam refuses to think of him as an act. No more than he could picture Dad in a clown suit, perish the thought. "It’s not like that at _all_."

Because Chuck may be Our Father in Heaven (when at home), but he’s human incarnate too, the whole nine, and that’s what Sam sees when he props the book against his pillow and finds Chuck’s brown gaze. _Don’t confuse me with your father_ , it warns. _Gotcha_ , Sam answers.

Mom lets it go. But within a few days _she_ ’s gone, the door shutting her out, a Mom-shaped hole in her wake. Sam gets it, really. It’s the first principle of Hunterdom: know what you’re up against, then do what you’re up to. He gets it, except part of him doesn’t. The door slams again and again in Sam's mind, a remembrance of things past, rifts past, all the times Sam did something that threw his family out of kilter.

Dean is on lockdown, so Sam goes up to his room, seizes his gift and flips it open. Later, he will remember that the flip has a name: bibliomancy. I.e., divination by reading a sacred verse at random. Sometimes using a pin, sometimes dice or a straw, or a razor blade stuck between the pages. Pagans did it first, only they used Homer as a pincushion and called it _rhapsomancy_. "Swing it for me, baby," Dean would say if he wasn’t nursing a shot or ten, crooked over his laptop.

Sam just lets his eyes fall on the first words.

 _Dean flipped his phone open, his heart a rock-hard beat in his throat. Was he really doing this? Yes he was. Last call before terminus-end, whether Hell or Heaven called the shots. He was going to speak his mind, yell it over Ruby’s if he had to, never stopping until Sam got the message. Exhaling an intent breath, Dean called Sam_ ’ _s number._

_"Hi," Sam’s voicem_

Sam shuts the book so fast it bounces out of his palms. Heart in his throat, both suffocating. God. Ah, God. The nausea stings his eyes. This your comfort, you fucker? This what you think I need most? Of all the places to take me, of all the dark, cruel, unforgiving – why? Why are you doing this?

The book has taken a belly-flop to the floor, spine up. Meaning, it’s splayed open. Again.

Sam looks away. 

And then… and then, because his heart is dumb, blind and a masochist when it comes to faith, he picks it up.

 

* * *

 

Dean says "Heck, Sammy, _I_ ’m the one stinko drunk", but clasps a hand to his brother’s neck – his not to question why their decanter is lying in shards on the terrazzo floor, nor why he is in the grip of a Sam babbling wet, heaved-up words of hope and _thanks_ in his ear.

 

* * *

 

"God didn’t kill your daughter," he tells Mrs Peterson. "You did."

Later sees him a captive in a dusky kitchen, hands bound, anger unlimited. It may be Sam’s fault that he’s sitting here watching a family rip itself apart in a class A remake of _Carrie_ : he should have known better than to break his act and take on the psycho mom. But what she said about God – his God – he couldn’t let pass.

Later still, Magda Peterson’s head on his shoulder, he almost tells her. But what? That the only thing God ever hacks these days is literary prose? That He’s a giver, not a taker? Or the guy with the glasses and the off-key lower tones Sam thinks of last thing at night?

In the end, he hugs Magda and tells her to page him if she needs anything. Like Chuck, like Sam. ‘You did make me in your image," he thinks, already yearning for home and the picture on the dust jacket.

Later at last, when he opens the book, it gives him _Heart_. Sam has no idea why. It’s been a good day: he’s saved Magda, and Dean has agreed to tone down the Oedipal tantrums. In Sam’s book, a gold-star day. But it’s good to learn that Maddie died unafraid. Even better, that she went to a special Heaven for those who die young, after their life was blighted by the dark side of free will.

 

* * *

 

Things get better. Well, things get good enough that Sam can whittle Bibliomancy down to one or two dips a day.

"Yeah, better not overdo the love connection," Dean says once, feet up on their map table, fingers hitting his phone keys.

"Who we talking about here? You text Mom eight times a day!"

Dean makes _She’s Mom, duh_ noises and turns back to his phone. A whole minute elapses before his, "Anything you wanna tell me?"

Sam hums "Mmm?" and lets it pass. He is currently agreeing with Chuck that the extra chapter in _Wendigo,_ where Dean spends the ten-hour drive to Colorado honoring Sam’s grief by mentally reviewing his top ten disastrous hook-ups, was best left out. _Kill your darlings_ , Chuck had tagged on mournfully, and _Tone break, can’t have it_. It sure makes hilarious reading.

"You," Dean says, making his point clear. "And Chuck."

"What about us?" When Dean raises an eyebrow, Sam lowers the book and counters, "Newsflash, Chuck is on a millennium mini-break with his sister. There’s nothing between us." 

"Riiight." Dean flashes his brother a heavy look. "Which totally explains the weird word-of-God sexting." 

"He’s not sexting me! He’s not…" Dean’s grin widens at the demure blush on Sam’s upper cheeks, and Sam swears under his breath. Next time he runs into the British M.o.L. he’s going to ask them the recipe for leek and kidney pie. And then, bake it himself. "He’s not into guys," he mumbles.

"Man, he’s God. Being of infinite attributes and all that. Why don’t you ask the missus?"

"The _what_?"

‘"Becky. Your mutual ex. I mean, hey, they bonded over her writing you as Mr Perfect, and she married you to get one over on him. Indicative, Sammy. Very indicative."

"We’re not having this conversation." Sam rises with infinite dignity. Leek and kidney pie _and_ mint sauce. He’ll look it up on the Web if necessary. 

"Aww. Roses are red, violets are blue, you’re a big-time nerd and God Hearts You." Dean’s laughter nearly keels him over the tabletop. "Whaddya bet Dad is giving him the shovel talk as we speak?"

Because Sam is a saint, and a laughing Dean scores as progress, he simply walks away. But it’s only a matter of time, and Dean waking him at cock-crow with "I killed Hitler!", for Sam to send saintliness packing and mention the ghoulette from Idaho.

 

* * *

 

The problem with Dean’s jokes is, uh. They’re terrible.

And, being terrible, they tend to stick in mind.

Sam tells himself that God has no favorite. As Himself said. Millennium bachelor, intangible single dad, an old hand at parthogenesis, that's God. _Way_  out of Sam’s league.

But Chuck… Chuck is another story.

And there’s the book. The infinite gift. Sometimes, its splendor feels too good to be true, like it's Chuck’s return for half a lifetime’s prayers – Chuck whispering in Sam’s ear as he did once, warning him about Ruby. And Sam’s heart flings its doors open every time he opens the book... or looks at that picture...

Oh God. He’s in love with Chuck Shurley.

He’s in love with the King of kings and Lord of lords, mighty and awesome.

He’s _so_ bound to Hell again.

 

* * *

 

It takes another week for Sam to lay his devotional scruples aside and dive back into his first-draft Gospel. 

 _Swan Song_.

Oh...

(Portent?)

_Chuck glanced over at the phone. He didn’t give a crap which county, time zone or ontological plane the next ring came from, long as it came as a distraction. Tonight was…a hard day’s night. He could feel ~~the jaws of fate closing down on Sam like an Alaskan king crab’s pincers, and that cancerous knowledg~~ e_

_\-----_

_Chuck glanced over at the phone. He didn’t want it to ring. Even Mistress Magda’s young ladies, ~~naughty minxes as they were~~ , would fail to cheer him up. Instead he peered at his screen again. Tonight, the writing flowed like whoa. A bittersweet whoa, ~~the pictures of Sam before his Fall, hair falling over the pale honey of his brow, mouth soft and earnest~~ _

_\-----_

_Chuck glanced over at the phone. It rang._

_~~"Sam?" he almost said, hoping against hope~~ _

_"Mistress Magda?"_

 

…oh.

 

* * *

 

Dean and Mom snaffle up the bacon like true-born Kansans, while Sam takes a picture on his phone. 

"So what’s up with you boys?" Mom finally asks, wiping her mouth. "Big game hunting, this time of year?"

"You said it." Dean winks at his brother from a face shining with equal amounts of grease and glee. "I killed Hitler, Sam hit on God."

Mom stares her _you what exactly?_  

"Screw you," Sam says, flushing thirty years of valuable telly education down the can and taking the bait. "You’re just pissed, because He flipped you the finger when He saw you last."

"Boys…" Mom looks around, smiles at the crowd of baffled breakfasters. "Modern-style Evangelists," she says airily. "Come on, you two. Poor Jody’s waiting for her ride."

"Here, I’ll carry that for you." Sam tucks the wooden box with Asa’s postcards once more under his arm. "I’m glad Mrs Fox let you have them."

"I’m glad they have reached their destination." Mom lets him wrap his other arm around her shoulders and steer her to the door. "But then, yours is a brave new time for communicating. Right, Dean?"

Somehow her words and the cards, the miracle of the cards’ homecoming, stay with Sam. They drive back, and he does his bunker chores; lets the evening slip by with food, table clearing and a tug-of-war with Dean over the comparative merits of Antonioni and _Mysterious Girlfriend X_. But when it’s book time, Sam takes a pen with him, and when he’s done reading his verse, he writes in the margin "I really like your style". 

In the old days, they called it divine exegesis. Sam no longer minds calling it sexting.

  

* * *

 

Some deaths feel like a jolt in time, some like a freeze-frame. When Billie puts her hand on Sam’s forehead, the effect is closer to a perfect whip pan. Sam’s eyes swivel, sort of, and the grey-washed walls, the cot, the bog, the slat of lifeless incandescent white are replaced by a sweep of true light. It’s sunrise taking over the depressing neons, and it’s a large field in the spring with a nearby sound of water. Sam breathes in and starts at the good-natured smells: wildflowers, familiar, long lost.

"Mercury," says a familiar voice. Chuck is sitting on a camping-chair, reading a book. "Sweet flag, aster, columbine. Wild ginger."

Sam, still taking in space in great gulps, nods. 

"I used to…" His voice is raw after the months of enforced silence, a crow trying out its diction. Out of place. He tries again, past the gratitude swelling in his throat. "I played soccer here as a kid." 

"Come and sit by me." Chuck pats the chair next to his, and Sam walks over to him, marveling at the soft crunch of grass under his prison shoes.

"The last time you saw me, I was dying."

"Guess that makes us even," Sam says haltingly. The chairs are close; Chuck’s knee an inch away from Sam’s, still clad in grey-washed prison twill. Then Chuck sighs, but smiles across the sigh.

"A no-queue ticket to Limbo, Sam? That’s a, huh, tall wager, even for you."

"With a stop. This is nowhere near the Empty, if it has you."

"You couldn’t have known that. Billie..." 

"Isn't the one who holds my – faith. And I couldn’t bail out on Dean. And that place was hell already." Sam pauses. "And I’d left my book home."

When he lowers his eyes, he realizes that the book in Chuck’s hands is his own, down to every tiny scratch and abrasion on the jacket. He lifts his face again and is met by Chuck’s smile - radiant now, undistilled joy layered over a creator’s deeper, subtler pride.

"I like that you liked _Tall Tales_. It’s my favorite!"

"I liked... everything I read." Sam stops to bitchface. "Except _Bugs_. Man, my butt ain’t demure."

"I hope to be the judge of that," Chuck says, and Sam feels the idiotic onset of blood in his heart, hot, drowning out the river sounds. "Up to now, my boyfriends have been... nice, but. You know. All one or the other. All latex and John Winchester roleplay, or reading French Theory in bed, which. Bit over the top, either way."

"Can it be?" Sam interrupts, not caring to hear God’s tale of dating woe.

Chuck lets his fingertips graze the cover, where Sam wrote his name in proprietary block letters after he failed to nail the front page.

"What, Sam?" 

"You and me? I mean, you’re Chuck, but you’re also – _Chuck_. And, don’t take it personally, but one of you really frowns on human and spirit one-on-ones." Sam reflects a bit more. "And I’m due for Limbo."

"But you said yes hoping to see me."

"One last time. Yeah." Sam blinks hard, aware of his vision turning foggy. "Chuck, you have to know I –"

"Wow, man. We need to work on your crappy time parameters." Chuck leans sideways and down; picks up a small flower and tucks it behind his ear. It makes him look stupidly, irresistibly hippie-ish, and Sam nearly kisses him on the spot. "What am I doing right now?"

"You’re… talking to me?"

"Yes. And I’m watching my sister cradle the Milky Way in her arms, the fireflies dance over a Korean lake, Castiel enter your mom’s car, the birth of Thomas Aquinas – such a _big_  baby –, the first dinosaur stomp its foot, a trumpet note in L. A., Lucifer’s child growing cell after cell in a young woman’s womb. I live _sub specie aeternitatis_ , Sam. I fill all times and all places at once, and here, in this green field, Chuck is eternally with you. As you... will find one day."

"But it can’t be." Sam is crying now, but, curiously, there is little pain and no shame; the sensation is rather of something strong and pure fountaining out of him, an orgasm of the soul and senses. "Because I made a deal."

Chuck kisses him. Awkwardly, intensely, until Sam sighs a breath and takes the upper hand, pressing his mouth to the straight nose, the deep-set eyes, Chuck’s soft beard and his lips again, still moist from Sam’s tears. He pulls Chuck against his ribs, trapping him between his lap and his arms, and gives in to the obliterating warmth of their hug. Outside time, outside fear, kissing his God (his guy) until Chuck is fairly straddling his thighs and the chair, unused to Sam-size customers, two wobbles away from collapse.

When they are face to face again, Sam looks over Chuck’s shoulder and sees the sun consume the field. The light is enclosing them - only a patch of grass left under their feet - and it shows Chuck to him, looking sad.

"Deadline," Chuck says."Yours, for now."

"It’s okay." Sam’s voice is raw again, and yet there's an odd peace coming over him. "Chuck, it's okay, I can do this." A last kiss; a quick, closed-mouth consolation. "Thanks – for giving me this. And, and the book. I loved it. Keep it for me, will you? I won’t need it anymore, where I'm going."

"No, you won’t." Chuck stands up, the sun in his back enveloping his reddish-brown hair in a golden cast. "You're your own author now, Sam Winchester. Just walk into the light."

Sam does, and the brilliance rushes in to meet him from every angle. There is a voice in the sun, singing _Fare thee well, O Honey_ , and then the entire scene turns bright, and dim, and bright again, and Dean is shaking his arm in the neon-lit prison morgue. 

It is night outside, but the light stays with Sam. Even when it’s – incredibly – morning again and they’re driving home, safe and very much alive, the other light stays on. The sun softens the greens of each Kansas field as they stream past the car window, and Sam, his brow pressed to the glass, finds himself smiling. _One day_ , Chuck said. And _one day,_  Sam Winchester will hold him to His word.


End file.
